Last Updated: October 20, 2023, 14:57 IST
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (File picture/Reuters)
The International Olympic Committee rejected Vladimir Putin’s allegation of “ethnic discrimination” towards Russian and Belarusian athletes.
The International Olympic Committee on Friday firmly rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allegation of “ethnic discrimination” by the IOC towards Russian and Belarusian athletes forward of the 2024 Paris Games.
The IOC dismissed the accusations.
“Participation in the Olympic Games is by no means a human right and the recent amendment of the Olympic Charter is not related to it… We firmly reject the accusations being made that these measures are an ‘ethnic discrimination’,” the IOC stated in an announcement.
“The strict conditions the IOC has defined in its recommendations to the International Federations for the participation of individual neutral athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passport in international competitions are compliant with the Olympic Charter.
“They are a reaction to the breach of the Olympic Charter by the Russian and Belarusian governments.”
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Putin on Thursday had lashed out on the IOC for successfully suspending Russia from the Olympic motion, accusing it of utilizing the Games as a instrument of politics and racism.
Last week the IOC banned the Russian Olympic Committee for recognising regional our bodies from 4 territories that Moscow claims to have annexed from Ukraine.
“Thanks to some of the leaders of the modern International Olympic Committee, we learned that an invitation to the Games is not an unconditional right of the best athletes, but a kind of privilege, and can be earned not by sporting results, but by political gestures that have nothing to do with sport at all,” Putin advised the “Russia – Sporting Power” convention within the Urals metropolis of Perm.
“And that the Games themselves can be used as an instrument of political pressure against people who have nothing to do with politics. And as gross, and in fact racist, ethnic discrimination.”
Russia has been at odds with the Olympic motion ever since its personal Sochi Winter Games in 2014, the place its athletes had been discovered to have benefited for years from a big-scale state-sponsored doping programme – one thing Moscow denied.
As a consequence, since 2018, Russians thought-about to be doping-free have been allowed to compete on the Olympics solely underneath impartial flags. The IOC didn’t say final week whether or not they can be admitted to Paris 2024.
(With inputs from Agencies)
